The Rockin' Moroccan (Thanks, Joey)

Hello again friends, family, and random strangers. This post was actually written about a week and a half ago, but I have had limited access to power to charge my laptop and internet.

As I mentioned briefly in my last post, two weeks ago on Friday, the J-Squad paid a visit to a Moroccan nursing home, Daar a Senine in the Yacoub Al-Mansour neighborhood of Rabat. I was gravitated to Fatena’s corner when I saw a group of my fellow journalists gathered around her, smiles all around. As I approached, she waved me into a seat next to her, and of course, I obliged. Right away you could feel her warmth.

She was wearing a long pink nightgown, and an orange and yellow hijab. Her fingertips were stained with henna. She took my hand between hers, smiled at me with a genuine smile if there ever was one, and told me her name. It was difficult to keep a conversation going, but with Eloise’s limited knowledge of Arabic, we were able to get to know her a little bit.

I kick myself for forgetting to bring my camera to the home, but soon there will be an extensive library of photos posted on ReportingMorocco.org. The above video is a short cell phone video I was able to grab. The noise she is making is known as zrarit, a celebratory sound which means happiness, welcome, and good fortune. She did it at least 15 times.

A violinist places at the Chellah Jazz
Festival in Rabat. It doesn't make sense
placed here in the post, it's mostly just
to keep your attention. :)

A fellow resident warned Fatena about talking to us. With the help of Badr translating, we were finally able to understand what Fatena was telling us. “You should be careful when you’re around people,” said Fatena. “Don’t tell all your secrets. Don’t play all your cards. Be silent, but not too silent. Talk only when you need to talk.”

She talked about being alive during the Years of Lead, a term used to describe of political oppression under King Hassan II. She was in Salé, she said, during the 1971 failed coup d’état attempt. “Everyone was scared,” she told us. Some reports had said the King was killed, others said he was still alive.

In our final minutes with Fatena, she gave us some advice. “Take care of your mom, your mom, your mom, and your dad,” she said. Your mother, she explained, is taking care of things you probably aren’t even paying attention to.

That weekend, we took a trip to Casablanca to celebrate our cohort Caitlin’s 21st birthday. We took the SNCF, the passenger train. The ride was short and sweet and cost only four or five USD. We managed to book a very nice, albeit a little sketchy, hotel in downtown Casablanca. We spent the majority of the night exploring a strip of nightclubs along the coastline. I’m going to choose not to go into much more detail on that…

The festival took place at Chellah, ancient Roman ruins that
were destroyed in the 18th century. Lit with red spotlights,
I maybe, just a little bit, felt like I was at Red Rocks. It was
a fantastic night, and I have the pictures to prove it.

In the following days, we started to feel the grind of school coming back. Journalism lectures, language classes, homework assignments. The “study” part of study abroad.

Saturday night, we attended the Chellah Jazz Festival in Rabat. It took place at the Roman ruins at Chellah. It was packed, and apparently just having a nice looking camera means you can act like press and nobody really cares, so that’s what we did. We heard some fantastic acts, and although the crowd wasn’t really dancing, that didn’t impede us.

I apologize for the lack of pictures in this post and it being so late. As I write, we are sitting in a girls' dormitory in Ouarzazate (in Arabic, "the door of the desert") closing out Day 3 of our Southern Excursion. We have done so much , but I'll go into it all next time.

Talk to you all soon!